Mechanicum

'The raw data you gave us to work with…' said Dalia. 'I based the upper levels of assumed energy transference on the psychic strengths you've used so far, but this time the energy levels will be hundreds… thousands of times greater than before. The reader used fragments of reflected and refracted psychic bleed… scraps and trickles of psychic energy, but this is going to be a raging torrent!'

'Psychic confluence in five, four…'

'Adept Zeth,' said Dalia, tearing her eyes from Jonas Milus and spinning to face the Mistress of the Magma City. 'We have to stop this. It's going to be too much!'

'Don't be ridiculous,' said Zeth. 'We cannot stop it.'

'You have to!' begged Dalia. 'Please! It's only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.'

'Three, two, one…' continued the countdown.

'No… Oh, Throne, no!' cried Dalia, turning back to the domed chamber.

Blinding light, brighter than a million suns, flooded the chamber of the Akashic reader as the full might of the Astronomican poured its energies through the coffers and into the blind psykers.

Shouts of alarm and warning klaxons blared almost immediately.

And over it all, Dalia could hear the agonised screaming of Jonas Milus.

The desolate uplands between the volcanoes of the Tharsis Montes were bare of structures or habitation. Any landscape habitually trodden by the god engines of the Legios was crushed flat by the unimaginable weight of the titanic war machines. The only artificial creations were those placed there by Legio servitors to act as target practice.

The land between Ascraeus Mons and Pavonis Mons was rugged and inhospitable, an area of demarcation between two warrior orders who shared a region of Mars but little else. A few of the nomadic vassal tribes that plied the ashen wastelands between the great forges of the adepts had tried to found settlements there, but even they were forced to concede that living in the shadow of the Titan fortresses was untenable.

The great golden gateway of the Legio Tempestus fortress at the end of the Ascraeus Chasmata stood open, and three titanic engines, resplendent in their cobalt blue armour plates, marched out. Kill totems and trailing honour banners billowed on their weapons and from enormous masts fitted to their carapaces.

Metallus Cebrenia, the engine of Princeps Sharaq, led them out, followed by its smaller siblings, the Warhounds Raptoria and Astrus Lux. All three machines were fully armed and ready to fight, their gun-servitors and auto-loaders cycled up to battle readiness. A host of bestial, armoured Skitarii divisions swarmed at the base of the canyon, but Sharaq knew that they would be of little use in any engine fight that might develop.

Only a fraction of the Tempestus Skitarii remained on Mars, but Aeschman, the commander of the Martian divisions, had demanded the right to march out with the engines, and Sharaq wasn't about to deny the towering brute the chance to lead his augmented warriors.

To march out with such a force was almost unheard of on Mars, but with tensions running high in the Tharsis region, Princeps Sharaq was taking no chances with the security of the Legio's fortress.

With Princeps Senioris Cavalerio protecting the reactors of Ipluvien Maximal, Sharaq was next in the chain of command and the security of Ascraeus Mons was his responsibility.

He just wished he had more engines to secure it with.

Two Warhounds and a Reaver fresh from refit was no force to protect an entire base, not when the engines of Mortis were walking.

Cavalerio's battle group was on its way back, but a ferocious dust storm had blown out of the west from the slopes of the Great Mountain to confound the auspex, so, for all intents and purposes, Sharaq was on his own.

Did Mortis have violence in mind? Sharaq didn't know and just hoped this was another of Camulos's posturing walks to demonstrate his Legio's favour on Mars.

'Dolun?' asked Sharaq. 'Where are they?' He didn't need to clarify who he meant.

'Getting engine returns and heat blooms from four or five engines, my princeps,' said his sensori, feeding the information to Sharaq through the Manifold. The view through the cabin windows was a swirling, seething mass of orange and brown dust particles, the smooth-finished rock of the canyon sides barely visible in the gloom.

Sharaq needed no visual cues to command the Metallus Cebrenia, for he was navigating and driving his engine via the sensorium of the Manifold, a much more reliable source of information than the poor sense of his eyes.

'I estimate sixty kilometres out, closing fast,' said Dolun. 'Possible four engines, striding speed or better.'

'Throne, they're big,' hissed Moderati Bannan.

'Warlords,' said Sharaq. 'Three of them. And maybe a Reaver.'

'Probably,' noted Bannan. 'But that heat bloom in the centre… it's too big for one engine. Might be another marching in close formation. They could be trying to hide another engine.'

'Dolun?' queried Sharaq. 'What do you make of that assessment?'